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Tuesday, 9 December 2014

4 STEPS TO AVOID PROCRASTINATION

1. Become a hermit.
And I mean literally isolate yourself from civilization. Shut your door. Hang a "Do Not Disturb" sign if you must. Put your phone far, far away so that the effort of retrieving it is greater than the temptation of browsing Pinterest pics or your Facebook news feed of people you don't even talk to.2. Put yourself into the zone.
You might think this is impossible, because if you don't feel like working, you just can't. What I've found, is that I can easily inject myself into the "Let's do this!" mindset just by putting up my hair and slipping into my comfiest clothes (or vice versa, I know some people work best when they're properly dressed!) When the makeup's off and the baggy T-shirts are on, you know it's time to get serious.

3. Push through it.
I'm sure many of us agree that the hardest part is getting started. It's always that blasted topic sentence that gets us. If you're struggling, JUST DO IT (wise words from Nike). Force yourself to put words on paper. It's so much easier to go back and edit something that's already there (unless you'd rather write a complete essay from scratch?). Even when you reaaaally do not want to work, just power through. Your future self will thank you later.

4. Set restrictions.
Be harsh on yourself. It's all about the D word - Discipline. I once got so behind on work that I installed a bunch of website blockers that forbade me to go onto certain websites at a certain time. And there was no way around it, except for restarting your whole computer. Desperate times call for desperate measures right? Sure, it might suck at first, but do you really need to chat to a friend you saw just a few hours ago? The truth is, all of us are weak and will probably cave in without things like this to help us. So if you need to, do it.